An auspicious occasion

I have been accepted into the Artful Quilters Web Ring :) Thanks Diane! I now really need some html knowledge as I pasted in the code for the ring, but I'd like it formatted a bit nicer.

I feel honoured to be in such illustrious company. This is just fantastic.

Slow Progress

I am making some progress, although it feels like trying to exercise in a pool filled with syrup. I ordered 20 metres of "Magic Applique" (fuse) from MGE in PE and they are posting it to me. It should get here in the next few days, which means I can continue with the Protea quilt, since I found (and dyed) the rest of the various reds and pinks I will need.

I am going to a specialist clinic at the hospital today to see about my current depression. I'm a bit nervous, since I don't know the doctor I'll be seeing and it's a vulnerable feeling, to go and spill your guts. It's not as if I haven't done it before, but it is a very disempowering situation and the depression means I project judgment onto everyone I talk to. But I do need this. I have to go and sit in a queue for at least two hours - and there is a bit of humour in this, as I thought "I will HAVE to take something to sit and work on during that time" (much as Melody Johnson says whenever she has to go on a plane trip "What will I knit?"). So, since Friday I have been planning what I will take to work on at the clinic. Couldn't help smiling at that, so things are not all bad.

Finally I settled on this: which I put together after listening to Leonard Cohen and kd lang, two of my favourite musicians. Interestingly enough, it's all the same black fabric, but the green has been discharge-dyed with Jik (bleach). I didn't know how much to add, so I just poured, and then forgot it while I was soaking it in the bleach. Oops. It ate through a lot of the fabric and I ended up with some tatters, but just enough intact fabric for this. Isn't it amazing that beneath the black lies this green?

A slightly closer shot:

And right after I took this, a spool of thread whizzed across the camera screen, followed by a cat in hot pursuit. Serves me right for trying to photograph work on the floor...

I also tried a bit of painting. Paint has this attraction of being so immediate, which has great appeal, since fabric work is so labour-intensive. A while back I bought some prepared canvases (who knows, one day I might be a REAL artist who actually works on CANVAS, gee whizz...) which were on special at R20 for an 8 by 8 inch. It was a LOT of fun - I sloshed paint on it, mixed some colours, since I only have primaries. Once it had dried, the mixed-media urge grabbed me and I sewed on some beads. I'm quite pleased with the result and will definitely try it again:

Celestial bodies in my head

Tuesday 18 Sept: I had the text for this post all written and saved, or so I thought, but I must have been mistaken. Not sure I can remember what I wrote, but I'll just get on with explaining the pictures, shall I? I had some swirling lines and big dots swimming around in my head and sat down with a huge piece of paper and this is the picture that I got down. I fabric-painted it in two colourways: a warm one and a cool one. Now they look like celestial bodies to me.

It was fun to do. A bit like colouring-in when I was a child. I tried shading some of the areas, but I guess I will need to work on that. But then again, I suppose most things are about practice. "All things are difficult before they are easy" - can't remember who said that.

I don't yet know what I'll do next to these two, but I've put them aside until it occurs to me.

The Protea (see a few posts back) has also had to be put aside as I've run out of fuse. Luckily I found the shop I usually buy it from on the Net and they have email! So I emailed them and they are going to post me 20 metres of fuse - should keep me out of mischief for a while.

Today two books arrived that I ordered about a month ago from kalahari.net:

Fabric Art Journals by Pam Sussman and

Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista.

I've given the amazon.com links as they contain more info that the kalahari.net pages. I just CANNOT WAIT to get home and dive into these (work, work, work...grrr)

and speaking of which, I'm now feeling guilty, so I'd better get back there...

Protea Quilt

You may be excused if you don't think this looks much like a protea. Alas, I cannot even guarantee that it will look like a protea when it is finished, though that is the intention.

I've read the blog of Emily Parson for quite a while and gazed admiringly at her Nature quilts. Just SO beautiful! And I've wanted to do that sort of thing with our own South African flora. I finally worked out a way to get from a photo to a quilt (I suppose I could have tried asking her!) and 3 days ago, I actually began.
I began by 'posterising' my photo in MS Photo Editor. I then printed it out in both black and white and in colour in A4 size.

The following step had put me off doing it for so long, because I thought there *must* be an easier way (with all the computer power we have these days!) But in the end, I couldn't figure out what that easier way was and just settled for doing it the hard way. I placed a clear overhead projector slide over it and began to trace the main outlines of each colour (easier to see distinctions when you posterise). I'm still convinced there must be an easier way!
Next I had to get this slide blown up to poster (full) size. I luckily obtained the services of a kind computer scientist to do this and also print it out for me, onto 25 separate A4 pages, which I then sticky-taped together.
{can't put photo of full-size version in here as it is currently taped to the back of my backing, and likely to remain there for quite a while. You'll have to imagine the slide blown up much larger}

I then realised that I should have asked for TWO copies of the printout, as I'd need one to put behind the backing fabric, for the placement of all the pieces and one to cut up for each individual pattern piece. Argh. But there was nothing for it, but to tape another 25 pieces of paper together and trace another copy onto that.

I then taped the original copy to the back of a piece of lightweight, see-through cotton. Hooray. The other copy was to be cut up into pattern pieces. I decided (very wisely, in retrospect!) not to sit and cut apart all the pieces, as it would have been a total nightmare of a jigsaw puzzle!

Then I looked at the photo again and wondered how I was going to separate all the colours from each other. Surely there must be an easier way, than the hard, manual way! I still haven't found it, so I settled for the hard way. After staring at the picture for some time, I worked out that there were 7 different reds and 7 different greens, plus white. I gave each grade of colour a code and a name and then with my master list of made-up colours, I sat and worked out what colour each individual piece had to be. (See why I spent so much time trying to work out an easier way?)

I'm now at the point where I know where each colour has to go. And I've begun to fuse the individual pieces onto the background. I will probably satin stitch around the edges as I'm not that confident the fusing will hold without unravelling. *Hopefully* I will have, at the end a "painterly" picture of a protea. At the moment it just looks like a very large, crazy, paint-by-numbers!

But now.... I don't *have* all the colours in the specific shades I want! And I have absolutely NO idea how to dye to 'spec' to get a particular shade (and I do want hand-dyed, for the mottled effect) Nor do I have enough fuse to complete it all, a non-trivial issue, since I can only get the fuse in the next town, 1.5 hours drive from here.

Double argh. It is only the very intense desire to see this through and have an end result which looks even vaguely like Emily's flowers (translated into a South African context) that keeps me going. But it may end up looking like a mass of random splotches of colour. That's the downside of working 'blind', with a technique I've made up (when the wheel has probably already been invented!)

---

My first sewn garment was hilarious. I've long since tossed it in the bin, to save myself much embarrassment. At the time I thought cutting out the pieces according to the grain of the fabric was silly, since I could fit all the pattern pieces on a MUCH smaller piece of fabric, if I ignored that part. I sewed the entire thing, then held it up, put it on.... and realised why the grain was actually quite relevant.

My first knitted garment was equally hilarious. I thought it was silly to first knit a 'tension square' since I wanted to get straight to it. I knitted the entire thing, over many, many hours, then sewed it all together and then tried it on. Or rather, tried to try it on, except it wouldn't go on.... Because. It. Was. Way. Too. Small. I undid it all, rather than be confronted with lasting testimony to my own idiocy.

My ability to work hard was exceeded only by my stupidity. Okay, I've got a bit wiser since then, but this current project has me wondering if it will look even remotely like a real flower. I might do ALL this work and in the end it might just look awful. Perhaps I should make my intention a bit more obscure, so that if it flops horribly, I can claim I was trying to 'abstract' the general impression of a protea... to illustrate the 'essence' of protea-ness, the 'ethereal spirit' of the hardy protea as it survives under harsh conditions...

Yeah right.

Argh

I am immensely frustrated with Blogger. *Often* I try to update something on the template and it just won't let me save edits to the 'widgets'. Then a few days go by and it works fine again. Then it doesn't work again.
I won't belabour the point. More when I have photos of my current madness (what have I done???)

Silly quiz thing...

You Are 77% Creative

You are beyond creative. You are a true artist - even if it's not in the conventional sense of the word. You love creating for its own sake, and you find yourself quite inspired at times.

How Creative Are You?

WABing - could I cover my own couch?

So I was stumbling around the internet and stumbled upon this. Wow! Long ago I idly wondered if I could make my own slipcover for my old couch, but quickly decided it would be way beyond me and way too much work. This makes me think that perhaps it is feasible...?

The couch is beyond shabby. It might once have been shabby-chic (just after I bought it at an auction for R600) but now it's just shabby-tattered and shabby-awful. I have a piece of cloth thrown over it, but the cloth is now almost as shabby.

I'm super-impressed with what this lady did, and even more so with the step-by-step photos and instructions.

Great Fibre Art Blog :)

Just have to mention a Fibre Art blog I found, which I am totally impressed with. Love the work she does, love the cats and love her style :)

She is Deb of More Whiffs, Glimmers and Left Oevres. You go girl, awesome stuff!

Spring

Knot what I planned!

About 40 x 40 cm. It really is NOT what I planned to make with these strips... but then we often have to get out of the way of the work that wants to be made.

Jealousy is so unattractive

... and it's much worse when it's you yourself who is feeling it. Sigh.

I went to see an exhibition of some work done by a former friend of mine. (The "former" part is a long story, but not one I will go into here). It was amazing. It was the sort of stuff I wished I had done. And as I stood at looked at it, I realised I was jealous...

Of course my Critic came out in force and told me I had no talent, at least nothing like THIS and I'd never be able to do anything like it, etc etc. You know the story. And much as I tried to talk back to it, saying "I could do this, not exactly like that, but that wouldn't be the point, I would want to do *my* stuff", it came back with, "well you haven't got much done yet, have you? and you are nowhere near an exhibition and all your stuff is amateur anyway, who would pay money for it? it would just be embarrassing for you to have an exhibition...." and so forth.

Then on top of everything, I felt bad for feeling so jealous and I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about this person, and again realised I was just jealous, and to let her have her victory in the beautiful work.

All in all, I just felt totally lousy. I know that I am going through another bout of depression at the moment and this didn't help, but still...

I am trying to use it as inspiration for my own work, as in "if she can do it, so can you; you just have to DO it".

Horrible. Know the feeling?